Entertainment

Lily Collins Takes On Anorexia In Trailer For ‘To The Bone’

“I am healthy. I am in strong. I am in control.”

“Sick kind of dark humor,” isn’t the type of description you’d expect from a movie about eating disorders. But that’s how Lily Collins described her upcoming film, To The Bone, to Vanity Fair back in April. Now, we get a glimpse of what she was talking about in the first trailer.

Collins plays Ellen, a young anorexic woman forced into treatment after her disorder becomes life-threatening. While there, she meets an unconventional doctor (played by Keanu Reeves) and a cohort of patients who help her tap into some much-needed motivation to keep living. There are some cute moments in the clip, like when her mother (played by Carrie Preston) bakes her a cake in the form of a hamburger that reads, “Eat Up, Ellen!” But also more intimate moments, like when her sister says, in tears, “I feel kind of angry. It’s my life, too. I don’t get to have a sister.”

Both Collins and director Marti Noxon have opened up about their own pasts dealing with eating disorders, so the topic is particularly personal. In a piece for Entertainment Weekly, Noxon wrote about her intentions for the film. She said, “What I’m trying to do is bring understanding and compassion to an issue that touches way more people than we realize. And I want more people to talk about how much food and body image affect men and women and keep us from loving the moment we’re in.” We hope To The Bone will act as a jumping-off point for those conversations.

The film comes to Netflix July 14. Watch the trailer above.